Nearly 500 underprivileged children will be travelling to the centre during 2013 to enjoy a week’s holiday by the sea. The holiday centre offers them space to have fun, play, and be a child. The spacious grounds of the holiday centre will be filled with laughter and chatter of children while they ride on bikes and go-carts, enjoy the new cycle path, playground, and take part in sports and games.

The cycle path will add another dimension to this holiday experience, and we are extremely grateful to these wonderful volunteers for making this happen.

The team worked over a weekend and took the opportunity to enjoy the facilities of the holiday centre, whilst creating another facility to be enjoyed by children with little hope or expectation.

If anyone would like to help the charity, or to stay at the holiday centre for a weekend and week when children are not in residence, please contact info@leedschildrenscharity.org.uk or telephone 0113 245 4281.

Many activities have been organised to raise money for the Leeds Children’s Charity, but I think this must be the first for the Onesie’s.

During Christmas time, Emma Ward and her colleagues at Arla Foods organised a raffle and wore Onesie’s to raise money for the charity. £424.38 was raised from this activity and this money will be match funded by the company.

The trustees are enormously grateful to Emma and her colleagues for their generosity. The money raised will be used to help finance short breaks/respite for 4 disadvantaged children who would not otherwise have an opportunity to leave difficult home situations.

The charity will be providing 480 holiday places during 2013 and it would be fantastic if more supporters were to organise unusual and wacky ways in which to raise much-needed revenue to help children to have a break by the sea away from dysfunctional families or responsibilities beyond their years.

Do you have a wonderful new idea that will involve your friends and colleagues and raise funds for the charity? We would love to hear from you and to have the chance to share the fun with others.

2012 was another successful year for the Leeds Children’s’ Charity. Most importantly, 434 disadvantaged children enjoyed a break by the sea at the Leeds Children’s Holiday Centre, Silverdale – children who would not otherwise have had the opportunity to have a break from difficult home situations.

Catch me if you can

The trustees could not do their work without the wonderful support given to the charity by many amazing sponsors and benefactors. These include Northern Rail who sponsor train tickets for the children and their escorts; Richardsons Solicitors who have raised money and also provided invaluable advice and support; Aviva Leeds who have taken the charity to their hearts and have organised a whole variety of fundraising activities, sponsored bicycle ride, runners in the Leeds 10k, cake bakes, and more; DWF LLP who have raised money through dress down days, raffles, book sales, marathon running, and collected much-needed resources; Leeds University students who have done an amazing job of organising activity weekends and weeks for the children, raised money through auctions, raffles, music nights, and a Christmas Fayre in the City; and many more extremely generous benefactors too numerous to mention – corporates of all sizes, groups and organisations, and remarkable individuals who donate money, time, and/or resources to help underprivileged children in Leeds. 2013 has already started with a bang. Lowell Group have nominated the Leeds Children’s Charity as their Charity of the Year and have already organised a full programme of fundraising events. Support such as this will enable the charity to provide 480 disadvantaged children with a much-needed holiday by the sea during the summer of 2013.We are enormously grateful to everyone for their ongoing support and I apologise that there is not space enough in this blog to name all our incredible benefactors. However, sponsors and supporters are always given a mention on our website, blog, social media sites, or newsletter whenever the charity benefits from their munificence. We feel that it is our duty to broadcast that there are extremely generous people who are supporting children in dire need.

If you would like to help the Leeds Children’s Charity in any way, please contact info@leedschildrenscharity.org.uk, or telephone 01132454281. We would be delighted to hear from you.

A very special thanks is owed to the pupils of the Lisa Worsnop School of Dance for their amazing dancing and singing talent and skills presented to friends and family in order to raise funds for the work of the Leeds Children’s Charity. The show, ‘Curtain Call’ was a pleasure to watch from start to finish. Pupils from 4 to 40 took part in the show and they were all bright, enthusiastic, and entertaining stars of the night.

The charity was chosen to be the recipient of money raised from three shows that took place on 7 and 8 December 2012 for which we are enormously grateful.

Lisa Holmes, the dance teacher, said that it was a pleasure to raise money for such a worthy cause. Nearly £300 was raised from a raffle, loose change was collected in buckets as the audiences left the building, and a donation is to be made to the charity from ticket sales and revenue raised from the sale of DVDs of the show. All the money donated will be used to provide free residential short breaks/respite for disadvantaged and socially excluded children of Leeds aged 7 to 11 years.

The charity will provide nearly 500 holiday places during 2013, and the money received from this fundraising event will help the trustees to achieve their target.

Disadvantaged children of Leeds are to benefit from the very generous donation by Dr Jiannis K Pachos, Reader in Theoretical Physics, Royal Society URF.

Dr Pachos has written a book entitled ‘Introduction to Topological Quantum Computation’ and all the royalties from the sale of this book will be paid to the Leeds Children’s Charity .

Royalties of over £600 have already been received by the charity which we are extremely grateful. This money will be used to provide free residential short breaks/respite for underprivileged children who would not otherwise have an opportunity to leave difficult, and possibly dangerous, home situations.

Nearly 500 children will enjoy a holiday at the Leeds Children’s Holiday Centre during 2013, and the money received will help to finance a short break for 4 disadvantaged young people. For some, this will be the first time they will have travelled on a train, seen the sea, or played freely in the fresh air.

If you would like to help disadvantaged children of Leeds aged 7 to 11 years, please contact info@leedschildrenscharity.org.uk or telephone 0113 245 4281. We look forward to receiving your call.

Under the Community Support programme supported by British Gas, a team of 16 enthusiastic workers transformed an area within the holiday centre to bring the ‘WOW’ factor to a much-needed short break/respite for disadvantaged children aged 7 to 11 years.

Nearly 500 underprivileged children each year will be delighted with the bright, colourful entrance that will greet them as they enter the building, and this will make their holiday start with a swing.

The trustees of the Leeds Children’s Charity are enormously grateful to this fantastic team that was led by Emma Wells, Project Delivery Manager, who said that their plan was to make a difference for children who will enjoy time and space at the Leeds Children’s Holiday Centre.

The charity also benefited from support from G4S who have donated £500 for the work of the charity.

We cannot thank British Gas enough for this wonderful support, and we know that all our small visitors over the years will enjoy looking at the bright, colourful decoration.

As part of Sainsbury’s on-going Community Spirit Programme, bedding, towels, safety helmets and pads have been purchased for the charity for use at the Leeds Children’s Holiday Centre, Silverdale, near Morecambe. The charity is preparing to provide nearly 500 disadvantaged children with a short break/respite during the 2013 holiday season and the very generous assistance of the staff at Sainsbury’s Brewery Wharf will be a tremendous help in ensuring that everything is ready for their arrival.

Amy Stephenson, Sainsbury’s Store Manager, said that the staff at the new store were delighted to be able to support this worthwhile local charity and to help to make a real difference to the lives of vulnerable children of Leeds.

The trustees are enormously grateful to Sainsbury’s for this amazing support and we hope to develop a mutually beneficial working relationship with Amy and her staff during 2013 for the benefit of the children and everyone at Sainsbury’s Local Brewery Wharf.

The project is to replace the existing wooden equipment with modern, colourful, imaginative outdoor pieces. Awards have been received from Wade’s Charity, Hedley Foundation, Beatrice Laing Foundation, Leeds Building Society Charitable Foundation, and the Variety Children’s Charity. Fundraising activities have also been organised by the staff at the Leeds children’s’ Holiday Centre to raise more monies to complete the project.

A total of £22,250 is required and the charity has raised £18,500 to date. It is hoped that the equipment will be in place in time for the 2013 summer season. The equipment that will make up the play area is a Hurricane Swing, Rota Web Climber, Dizzy, Activity Trail, and 20m Zip Wire.

Some of the children who will use the play area live in high-rise flats or houses where it is unsafe for them to play outside, and the opportunity to run on grass, play in the fresh air, and enjoy the outdoor play equipment is a wonderful new experience.

If you would like to help create this amazing play area, or support the Leeds Children’s Charity in any way, please contact 0113 245 4281, or info@leedschildrenscharity.org.uk.

The Leeds Children’s Charity would like to thank a couple of companies who were involved in donation and fundraising campaigns over the Christmas period. First of all thanks to DWF who made a £500 donation to the charity and Shanco Construction, who have donated £600 to the charity in lieu of Christmas gifts that they would normally give.

In addition we also like to thank One Medicare @ The Light, who chose Leeds Children’s Charity as the charity their Christmas Giving Tree campaign would benefit from . This is an annual campaign where the centre urges patients, employees and local residents to buy an extra present whilst they are out doing their Christmas shopping and donate it to the appeal by placing it under the centre’s Giving Tree. Any gifts they receive under the tree at the Centre get donated to a charity of their choosing.

Aviva, who have been supporting the charity throughout the year, also collected Christmas gifts for the children including toys, pyjamas, games, and a very much appreciated digital camera.

Thanks to everyone who helped the charity in some way over the festive period, it is good to see that the Christmas spirit is still alive and kicking within Leeds.